Break You Down
by Abvj
Summary: That image of Lilly haunts her, and for months after her death Veronica swears every time she closes her eyes that is all she sees, all she dreams of. Pre-series. Veronica. Gen. Complete.


_**Disclaimer: **Veronica Mars and all related elements, characters are © to Rob Thomas and Warner Bros. Television, All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction, no infringement is intended, no profit is being made. _

Authors Notes: Pre series, general season one spoilers. Set right after Lilly's murder, but before _everything _happens (IE: Daddy Mars blaming the Kanes and all the controversy that ensued). How Veronica deals before she becomes the badass, kick butt PI we see in the pilot because two me, they are two very, very different Veronicas. Mostly Veronica with Veronica- Duncan subtext and Logan thrown in because I love him, and well he's pretty important here even though the fic isn't Veronica-Logan. Make sense? Feedback/Concrit always accepted. I feed off of it.

**XxX**

one.

Lilly died in the afternoon by the pool and some twisted, brutally honest part of Veronica admits that _that _was probably the way she would have liked it. Not the murdered part exactly, but the afternoon and by the pool part because that was Lilly in a nutshell - pure California girl who was never on time and always loved the sun. When she thinks of her best friend she tries her hardest to think of those memories - the four of them - Veronica, Duncan, Logan and Lilly - by the pool laughing the hours away without a care in the world.

Instead nowadays all she sees is the image of Lilly by the pool, _that _very same pool, with blood and open, blank eyes. That image of Lilly haunts her, and for months after her death Veronica swears every time she closes her eyes that is all she sees. All she dreams of.

Lilly - who was not so perfect, but always perfect to her - tainted. Ruined.

The pew is cold against her back despite the layers of clothing she has on and Veronica shivers as she takes her place between her sullen looking father and sunglass - wearing mother. She's too distraught to look for Logan, but not distraught enough to know exactly where Duncan is - sitting stoically next to his prim looking mother who didn't look broken enough for Veronica's taste.

Then again Veronica knows Lilly would have hated it if Celeste had pretended she was the caring, nurturing mother she wanted everyone to believe she was. Veronica knew Lilly hated Celeste above all else, and Veronica also knows that is a big part of the reason why Veronica hates her too.

Her father's hand slips into hers and she bites her lower lip to keep the tears from pooling at her eyes. She can faintly smell the alcohol radiating from her mother's clothes, and it gives her a sour taste in her mouth that makes her want to throw up. She refuses to look at her father as the service begins, and instead closes her eyes only to open them immediately thereafter when she sees Lilly's face behind her tired lids.

Veronica's grip on her father's hand tightens and she holds on like he is her lifeline and even in the midst of her best friends funeral it nearly kills her that she can't be there for Duncan like she wants - like she knows he _needs _her to be.

A sob echoes throughout the church and Veronica bites the inside of her cheek until she can taste the bitter taste of copper in her mouth to keep from letting herself do the same.

Then again it kills her to be there at all.

two.

A week after the funeral Madison throws a party because apparently the mourning period for Lilly was over (for some people anyway) and Veronica goes because Meg (who had always been nice to her) says it'll be fun and fun was something Veronica needed a little more of in her life. Despite her and Duncan's break - up she was still technically one of _them._

Veronica has never been a big drinker and when she has drank it was only with Lilly, Logan and Duncan. They had always, _always _told her when to stop in that gingerly brother/sister/caring boyfriend way that she realized she missed somewhere after the fifth shot of something that burned all the way down to her belly that she did with Dick. Only Duncan's not there, (and she half thinks he couldn't care less either way) and Logan's presence is strangely absent from the party and the rest of them either couldn't care about her enough to even notice that five shots was about four too many.

After Dick shoves yet another drink in her direction and she gulps it down so fast Dick's pretty little eyes nearly bug out of his pretty little head, she realizes his full intention was more or less to get her drunk and he is half surprised that his plan is working so well.

She also realizes after she leans back in her chair and motions with a wobbly hand for another drink, that she really doesn't mind all that much. Veronica realizes that the feeling of weightlessness and pure numbness is better then feeling at all because feeling meant thinking and thinking meant closing her eyes and seeing Lilly's face splattered with blood and Duncan rocking back and forth looking so utterly lost on his front porch.

Thinking is torture and Veronica is sick and tired of being tortured to the point of insanity by every waking thought.

A few more shots, a lot more drinks, and the room starts to spin, her head starts to pound and every time she moves just a fraction of an inch the bitter taste of bile enters her mouth and she is forced to push it back down. Veronica keeps drinking though, hoping that the alcohol would numb that feeling too.

Dick giggles in an almost feminine way (and in her drunken haze Veronica realizes that Dick _is _a little feminine) and hiccups at the same time. Veronica can barely make out his face as he leans across the table between them and inspects her closely like she was a bug on the bottom of his thousand dollar shoes.

"You don't look so hot, Ronnie."

Her eyes widen as she pushes her palms flat against the table and tries to stand. Only she can't, she can barely feel her legs and she ends up falling backwards with a loud thump, missing the chair completely and hitting her head against something sharp behind her.

There is a blinding pain (the first real thing she's felt all night) a hazy light, and then a flash of Lilly's face right before total blackness.

xXx

The smoothness of the oriental rug bothers her flushed face and the alcohol had finally started to ware off by the time she opens her eyes. That numbness she had been so fond of is replaced by a searing pain in the back of her head and a gut wrenching queasiness in her stomach.

Veronica's first thought is that she wants another drink.

three.

A month ago she would have called Lilly, two months ago she would have been with Duncan and this never would have been a problem. He never, _ever _would have let her drink so much. Now she realizes that the two people she used to depend on she no longer can and while that thought was like a swift kick in the gut, she is dialing a familiar number before she can even think twice about it.

"Mars, I swear this better be good. Do you realize that it's almost two o'clock in the fucking morning?"

On one hand Logan's voice is more comforting then she ever would have thought. On the other hand the bitter twinge of resentment she hears prickles at her skin and serves as a reminder that they haven't had a conversation since the day she told Lilly about his kiss with Yolanda. It also brings to surface that deep seated fear that any chance of reconciliation, any friendship they had may have disappeared right along with Lilly the day she died.

"Logan?" she sobs out his name like a prayer and is vaguely aware that she sounds completely pathetic, but can't find it in herself to care.

There's a ruffling sound, shifting and then he comes back on the line. "What's wrong, Veronica?" her name sounds like a cruse, released with a sigh that made it seem like he regretted answering the phone at all because she was placing this big, huge burden on his shoulders.

"I - I didn't know," Veronica hiccups frantically and tries to push herself up into a sitting position, but a wave of nausea comes over her and she falls back down to the floor with a thump. "I didn't know who else to call…"

"Well gee golly, Veronica, doesn't that just make me feel warm and fuzzy all over."

Normally she would have bit out a sarcastic, snarky response. Veronica couldn't even manage a simple fuck you in return, instead she just said nothing. Closed her eyes, saw Lilly and pressed them closed tighter. She feels like taking a knife and attempting to carve those images out of her mind, thinking that the pain of the process has to be less then the pain of seeing them over and over again.

She settles for smacking her head instead.

"Veronica?" he sounds half concerned, half irritated and her head is pounding from her hitting it and he doesn't give her a chance to answer before he sighs deeply and continues, "where are you?"

She shakes her head even though he can't see the action. It makes her head spin in a whole different direction. "I shouldn't have called."

"Veronica, just tell me where the hell you are."

"I…" she looks through bleary eyes and sees the fuzzy outlines of the empty shot glasses on the table, hears Madison's giggles as her and Dick do God knows what on a couch near by. She starts to gag and it breaks up into sporadic coughs. "I'm at Madison's."

He swears a long stream of obscenities before he comes back on the line. His tone makes her head ache and she wishes she hadn't called him. "Just stay where you are. I'll be there as soon as I can."

Veronica doesn't even get the chance to say something else before there's a dial tone in her ear. Turning on to her back, she stares up at the blank white ceiling with fuzzy vision and laughs despite herself at the image of Logan on a white horse that just suddenly entered her inebriated mind. The laugh if forced and turns into a soft, gut wrenching sob that hurts when it escapes her lips.

"_You know what best friends are?" Lilly giggled, looking like some sort of goddess in her gold homecoming dress as she took a sip out of the half empty wine bottle, watching with her characteristic, quiet smirk as Logan and Duncan wrestled on the beach. _

_She handed the bottle to Veronica who took it gladly. _

"_What?" Veronica raises her perfectly arched eyebrow and takes a long sip, used to the bland taste of the expensive champagne and the way it fizzes on the way down her throat by then. She had never drank before Lilly and it makes her smirk wryly that she never drank **without **Lilly either. Veronica didn't think she'd ever get used to the latter. _

"_They're the ones who will carry you when you're so drunk you can't walk," Lilly grabbed the wine bottle back, raised in a mock toast and downed the rest in a single, solid gulp. _

_Veronica leaned her head back on the seat and sighed contently. She kicked her expensive shoes off her feet, crossed them at the ankles under the yards of fabric that compiled her expensive dress and turned her head towards Lilly. _

"_Would you carry me when I'm so drunk I can't walk?_

_Lilly didn't have to reply because Veronica already knew the answer, but she did anyway. "Of course, silly," she grinned sloppily, "if I'm sober enough to walk myself that is." _

Veronica's eyes open and focus on the white ceiling once more, the entire room is tilting on it's axis (just like her world) as she turns over onto her side and draws her jean covered legs up to her chest.

God, she misses Lilly.

Interlude.

He's not sleeping when she calls - he's just laying there in his bed, the bed he's shared (fucked in) with Lilly so many times. He is thinking of those times, stuck in some sort of catatonic haze. He stopped counting the number of times he's tried to call Duncan and he's tried even harder to forget how many times he's tried to pick up the phone to call Lilly (because he'd gotten so used to just being able to pick up the fucking phone and bother her whenever he needed to or was just plain bored) only to realize half way through dialing that she wouldn't pick it up.

Logan's not sure why he thinks twice about picking it up when he sees Veronica's name flashing in blue on his phone, but he finally does after the third ring - just in time before the call can get kicked over to voicemail.

His greeting is less than friendly and more than a little assholishly and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that her slurred words and hysterical tone of voice mean that she's drunk off her ass. Which, Logan concludes, is not a good thing because a) everyone knew Veronica Mars couldn't hold her liquor and b) because everyone knew what happened when Veronica Mars can't hold her liquor - puking. And lots of it.

So Logan gets pissed at her because she knew not to drink without any of them and also because she called him at one thirty in the morning and he really didn't want to get out of bed to go and get her, but by God Lilly would kick his ass if he didn't…

And then Logan's pissed at Veronica even more because she has (completely unbeknownst to herself) made him realize for the umpteenth time that day that Lilly was dead and he was alone. And while he's listening to Veronica slur her words and hold back drunken tears at the same time he feels a little bit like crying himself as that dull ache in his chest overtakes his whole entire body.

But that selfish part of himself that he knew so damn well (he was an Echolls after all) is drowned out by the part that knows the reason she was calling him was because she didn't have Lilly either, or Duncan for that matter (which he still didn't understand, but who gave a fuck about that anymore, anyway?). So he's picking up his clothes and throwing them on and telling her to stay where she is because Logan knew that even though Lilly was dead she would still find away to kick his ass for not going to pick up Veronica because Lilly was Lilly and that was just something that Lilly would do.

Lilly loved Veronica and Veronica loved Lilly and if Lilly loved something well, it was pretty much a prerequisite that you had to love it too…

And, well, because he would kick his own ass later for not picking her up and for God's sakes he already hates himself enough for everything else as it is.

xXx

After he runs his second red light on the way to Madison's he starts to think that maybe he's not fit to drive either (what with the half a bottle of his father's perfectly aged Scotch he downed earlier that night) but this isn't the first time Logan's driven while under the influence and he knew it wouldn't be the last.

He stumbles into the party and shakes his head at the hero's welcome he receives, says no to the drinks that are being shoved in his direction. It does something to his insides - seeing Veronica in the she is in, laying on the floor with hazed, watery eyes. Logan feels like he might just throw up when he sees the back of her blonde locks matted with blood from a fall she must have taken earlier.

It eerily reminds him of another blonde and he swallows down the vomit that rises in his throat and instead focuses in on Dick, pushing Madison out of the way and getting right up in his face.

"How the hell could you let her drink so much? Huh?" He's angry enough (and drunk enough) that he might just hit him, but Madison lets out a drunken gasp of surprise and he lets go of his friends collar before he could even think of doing something stupid.

"Hey, man," Dick laughed as he attempted to stand up. "She didn't do anything she didn't want to do."

Even in his slight inebriated state, Logan knew that punching his sometimes friend wasn't going to solve anything and instead settled for pushing him back on the couch. Forcefully.

"You're a dick, Dick."

As everyone laughs at his joke he scoops up Veronica, and watches as she turns green.

He makes a futile attempt to smile down at her. "If you puke in my car, Veronica, I swear to God I'll make you scrub it out tomorrow."

Instead of answering she merely passes out.

Four.

The car hits a pot hole and Veronica's stomach lurches. Her eyes slide open, but she doesn't even have enough energy to keep them open. She doesn't have to look to know he's there, she can feel him, and as gingerly as possible she slides her head towards the window, resting her head against the cool glass, and tries to take deep, calming breaths.

"Thanks," she pauses, swallows, and tries again. "Thanks for coming to get me."

"Yeah, well," Logan clears his throat and she can feel tension in the air. "It's not like I had anything better to do." The car comes to an ungraceful stop (a part of Veronica thinks he's doing it on purpose as some sort of punishment) and she can feel his eyes on her, piercing right into her hazed mind. "This is a one time thing, Veronica."

"I know."

"I don't… owe you anything."

Even in her drunken stupor Veronica knows why he's there. It's the same reason she would probably always come running if and when he called - Lilly. Even in the wake of her death she's the undercurrent tying them together; she always has been.

Five.

When Veronica opens her eyes again the room is dark and it takes her a full minute to process the fact that the room that she is in, the room that is currently spinning around her is not hers. She tries to sit up, but her stomach lurches in protest and instead she gracelessly falls back into the haven of cool, crisp sheets that feel like heaven against her flushed skin.

The smell of throw up and the scent of expensive cologne lingers in the air and makes her start to gag. Memories flood back to her in random, nauseously bright spurts of technicolor and as she starts to cough, her head pounds and she promises, _swears _that she will never do this again.

"You're not going to puke again, are you?"

Logan is sitting off to the side and Veronica can barely make out his shape out of the corner of her eye, sitting in his chair like some smug outsider. She wants to tell him that he has no right to be smug, to lecture her. Veronica knows that Logan eases the pain of Lilly's death with caustic remarks and obsessive drinking. Veronica knows Logan better than he gives her credit for.

The queasiness subsides momentarily and she gently sits up, placing a hand on her stomach as if it would help to calm the jumble of nerves inside. She turns her head to look at him, and a wave of nausea washes over her once more and she can barely think twice before she leans over the side of the bed and heaves all over Logan's white carpet.

The smell is enough to make her want to do it again, but as she lays back down on the bed, her eyes falling shut as Logan flicks on a light, the queasiness that overcomes her has nothing do with alcohol and everything to do with the abject horror she feels at that moment. She's embarrassed and vulnerable and she hates it, and she feels the tears prickling at the corner of her eyes and wills them not to fall. But they do, falling in hot streams down her cheeks and she barely recognizes the sob that escapes her chapped lips as her own.

Veronica forces her eyes closed and sees Lilly standing over her, blood gushing from her head and dripping on to Logan's white floor next to her own vomit.

She throws up again.

Six.

"Are you parents going to freak?"

Veronica squints against the harsh light of the early morning sun and leans her head back against the seat. "They think I spent the night at Meg's."

Logan nods in response, coming to stop at a red light before turning to look in her direction. He had cleaned up the mess she had made in his room without complaint, held her hair back, let her sleep it off in his thousand dollar sheets. He feels sorry for her, Veronica knows, and a part of her guesses that it's okay because she feels sorry for him too.

They share a long look, one reminiscent of caring and Veronica wants to tell him that they can help each other through this. He looks like he wants to say something, but doesn't, and instead focuses on the road ahead of him as the light turns green. Her head is pounding and she stares after him for a long moment before focusing on the road ahead of her as well.

A quiet despair washes over her as the silence between them rings in her ears. There's too much between them, she knows that now, and while he came when she called, it wasn't for her. Her stomach aches with a different sort of queasiness, and she is so sick and tired of losing the people she cares about. Lilly, Duncan, and now Logan - she doesn't know how much more she can take.

Veronica realizes that her life is now separated into two separate entities - her life with Lilly and her life after Lilly. She wants to cling to her and Logan's friendship, to repair it, to hold on to what is left of the Veronica from her former life. It's useless though, she also realizes, because her and Logan were friends because of Lilly and the very thin string that held their friendship together had begun to fray long before she ever died.

"I miss her too, you know," Logan says quietly as he turns right onto her street.

"I… I know that."

Logan laughs mirthlessly and just like that the Logan from the night before - the Logan who scrubbed her vomit of his floor, the Logan who brought her aspirin and water is gone. It is almost as if in a two second span of time Veronica watches him transform into someone she doesn't even recognize.

"I mean, Jesus, Veronica, you walk around this place acting like the cross you bear because of this… mess, is yours and yours alone."

"I…" She's so stunned she can barely get out a coherent word. She stares at him in utter disbelief. "That's not fair, Logan."

"You're telling me."

She doesn't know what to say that, what to say at all, so she whispers, "I loved Lilly," like that makes up for it; like it makes up for everything.

"I loved her too," he chokes on the word 'loved', finally spitting it out with an amount of acridness that stings even her and she sees his eyes glaze over. "You seemed to have forgotten then you aren't the only one she left behind."

Veronica stares at him and she's so tired of _everything_ that she doesn't even fight back. Doesn't tell him that last night the tables could have very well been turned. That she saw the empty liquor bottles in his room, that she knows he hasn't been to school in over two weeks. She wants to tell him that she could help him through this - that they could help each other - if he'd just let her, but doesn't. She's exhausted, and her reserves are exhausted, and as she unbuckles her seat belt and reaches for the door she can't help but notice the amount of finality in the moment.

"Thank you for coming to get me, Logan," is all she says as she slips out of the door. He peels down the street not even a second later and she winces at the sound of tires skidding against asphalt.

Veronica turns to look back, but he's already gone.

seven.

"Hey, sweetie." Her father greets her with a kiss on the cheek as he awkwardly stuffs some papers quickly into his briefcase. "You're home early."

"History paper due Monday." she replies without thinking twice as she pours herself a glass of water. Her dad looks at her like he doesn't believe her, stares at her with scrutiny, and she knows he knows, but he doesn't say anything. Just gives her that sad sort of look she knows too well. Veronica knows they'll talk about it later. He isn't one to just let things slide, not this sort of thing anyway. He doesn't want her ending up like her mother. "Where's Mom?"

Her father avoids her eyes. "She's uh… still sleeping." Veronica nods, knowing that still sleeping translates to sleeping it off. There's an empty bottle of vodka in the trash and another half empty one in the fridge. They weren't there yesterday when she left.

Her head starts to pound as she makes her way into her room, slipping off her shoes as she makes her way towards the bathroom. She brushes her teeth for the fifth time that morning, scrubs the filth of her body from the night before. Afterwards, Veronica drops on to her bed with as much ease as she can manage. Her eyes fall closed as soon as her head hits the pillow. Lilly is there, all bloody with open, lifeless eyes, sitting by the pool in her pep squad uniform, magazine in her lap, soaking up the California sun.

Those lifeless eyes turn and it is almost as if she is staring straight at Veronica.

"_Everything's going to change now, Veronica. Everything." _

END.


End file.
